NYU Black Renaissance Noire Fall 2013 - Page 156

Kwame had bird-dogged news stories all
over the U.S, even in Cuba and Haiti—
panhandling and hoarding his treasure
chest of facts like a hopeless miser. At
times he’d practically chained himself to
his desk to pay penance to his writing
demon—combing the slush pile, not
daring to chance that he might miss it.
But what, goddammit? Whatever the hell
it was he couldn’t put a name to. It was
an itch that he couldn’t scratch. It had
even driven him back to the antebellum
plantations and slave shanties of
Mississippi and Alabama. But they had
only made him angry, and he had still
come up empty. Once he found himself on
assignment in Wilmington, NC, busting
his ass trying to piece together clues
about a string of drive-by Ku Klux Klan
murders. Known eyewitnesses were
tight-lipped, which was not surprising
since Klan thugs shadowed him everywhere
he turned. Just when he was about to lose
his cool, something weird happened.
“One day the fruit will fall!” a strange
voice spoke to him.
154
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Kwame shot back before he even realized
that no one was there.
BRN-FALL-2013.indb 154
“One day the fruit will fall—fat, ripe
and sweet!” The self-assured voice chimed
back at him. It made no goddamn sense,
yet somehow it had comforted him. As
time went on this weird mantra was the
only thing that sustained him through the
deadening avalanche of facts. Ironically,
it was his drive for excavating them that
won him respect amongst his peers.
He was reaping the spoils of a runaway
career as an investigative reporter with
a prominent Chicago daily when he was
assigned to cover the aftermath of a raid
on a Black Panther Party residence in a
suburb just north of the city. The raid
had been conducted just before dawn, the
home’s sleeping inhabitants showered with
automatic gunfire. Two young Panther
leaders were killed and others wounded.
Even Kwame, who knew his way around
a crime scene, was awed by the hundreds
of bullet holes fired at point blank range
into a residence that held sleeping men,
women and children. Something cold
and hard settled in his gut as he observed
the carnage—the lavishly spilled blood,
the horror in the eyes of the women and
children, the grief-scarred faces of young
Panther members barely old enough to
shave. But then his no-nonsense credo
reared its mulish head. The story always
came first. So he strapped a straitjacket
on over his feelings and trusted the facts.
And the facts told him that this was
a meticulously planned FBI hit. He
cranked out the story guided by forensic
evidence from the scene, eyewitness
accounts, a trusted source inside the FBI
itself, and well-publicized threats by the
head of the Public Defender’s office.
His story bled to death on the city desk.
Dan, his “fighting Irish” city editor—his
beer and pool-shooting buddy—had
balked, said his account was “too
emotionally charged.” That his story
had to be edited for “balance” and
“objectivity,” thinly guised code words for
“Don’t buck the status quo!” Meanwhile
he had to stomach the humiliation of
watching his boldest critic recycle press
releases from the Public Defender’s office
as “breaking news.” The whitewash
sickened him. His stash of ironclad facts
had always been his strong suit, his
armor. Righteous anger drove him into
a head-on collision with the company’s
top brass. Rebuffed, he passed his uncut
story on to the Chicago Defender, a
crusading black daily. That’s when shit
hit the fan. Newspaper Guild protection
notwithstanding, he was fired the same
day the story hit the newsstands.
Kwame hunched forward as if he’d
been gut shot, glaring at Anyika as if
seeing her for the first time. He stood
for a moment, one hand gripping the
desk, but an anchor drew him back
down into his chair. Oh God! Please
don’t let this be! A prayer wheezed
through his chest.
“But Anyika…I thought you of all people
would…” he broke off as the whipped
sound of his own voice sent a shiver
through him.
9/13/13 12:48 AM